High-Tech Success on Terror: Can it Help in Afghanistan?

My latest Capital Journal column looks at a success story in the war on terror, and whether it applies to Afghanistan:

If the mess in Afghanistan looks ever more like a dark cloud hanging over the war on terror, there’s at least a small silver lining: The military and the Obama administration are having increasing success using covert operations and high-tech weaponry to take out terrorist leaders in neighboring Pakistan and beyond.

The question now is whether these surgical strikes say anything about the path forward in Afghanistan. Do they suggest there are ways to strike effectively at terrorist organizations without having so many troops on the ground? Or is it an illusion to think there really is a clean and antiseptic way to fight terrorists?

In either case, something positive is happening. Just last week, strikes by U.S. unmanned aircraft, operated in cooperation with the Pakistani military, killed two prominent Islamists affiliated with al Qaeda in Pakistan. In August, an attack by an American Predator pilotless aircraft killed Pakistan Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud.

Earlier, in the spring, a similar attack is believed to have killed Osama bin Laden’s son, Saad bin Laden, in the Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghan border. All told, of a list of the 20 highest-priority Islamic militants drawn up by Pakistani and American officials last year, 14 have been killed, Pakistani officials say.

Meanwhile, in the most daring of the recent operations, a helicopter assault by American commandos, approved personally by President Barack Obama, last week took out the most-wanted al Qaeda operative in the lawless land of Somalia, an increasingly popular playground for Islamic extremists. The terror leader, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, and his bodyguards were killed when American helicopters struck their convoy with missiles, an attack followed by a firefight as American commandos hit the ground.